Excavations

Hard pressed to conjure artifacts,
evidence to validate existence,
I pushed my fingers into the dirt,
down through the layers of the lost,
and brought up fistfulls,
ceremonial masks which have
hidden too many faces,
pieces of broken pottery,
domestic rubble,
arrowheads and buckshot,
most of which missed their marks.

And where were you when I was digging?
On some far point, gauging the wind velocity
between the things I said to you then
and who I might be now?
Were you expecting ruins?

I am bound to these old things
but no longer of them.
They are the remains of a
dead civilization, pictures
drawn on the walls of caves,
you on a repelling rope,
me in a ravine,
and time has settled it's dust on us,
evolved and unrecognizable.

We are fossil hunters,
studying our own lives,
trying to make sense
of the bits and pieces,
trying to find patterns
and putting forth theories
which we cannot prove
or disprove.
There are no quiet rooms
to hold this history,
no one walks the halls
of this museum but us.
We are alone in our re-search,
our desperate compulsion
to unearth things better left buried.

Put down your tools,
your brushes and trowels,
and I will abandon mine.
The evidence of existence
cannot be found
in what we were then,
but in who we are now.

for Stokes